I stand strictly behind my opinion that teenagers (though there are some exceptions) say the word ‘love’ far too soon. When I finally have the opportunity to tell a significant other “I love you”, I want to be quite sure that I’m saying it to the person I will later marry. Call me old-fashioned, but as a writer I like all of my words to have significance.

Unfortunately, every day I watch young couples of my peers around me claiming love on the second date and breaking up a month later–face it, if you find it necessary to celebrate a one-week anniversary, it means your relationships have seldom lasted much longer than that. I still can’t decide if it’s depressing, disappointing, or demented.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it is nice when you notice a special individual who makes you feel all happy and silly and bubbly inside, and I won’t deny that I’ve had several aptly-named ‘crushes’ before, but isn’t it worth more to find one exceptional partner as opposed to a string of placeholders?

This afternoon, whilst digging through the dusty archives of the MacBook, I found an old poem! Well, what a surprise! I do remember the process of writing it several months ago, but can’t quite recall the specific experience which inspired it. Apparently I never posted it, and the poor thing was just lingering in the basement of ‘My Documents’, waiting to be remembered. Sniff, so sad…out of pity I have dragged it out and dusted it off a little bit, and turns out it’s actually a worthwhile piece!

Roadkill

Coasting home on the lonely drift of Route 523

around a curve my headlights pass over

a murder scene

on the shoulder.

It’s just a glimpse

but even today I can see the carnage as if it is

plastered across my windshield.

A hit and run.

Her body is cradled in the sharp metal arms of the guard rails,

legs bent and twisted against the bed of asphalt,

face pressed into the oily grit.

Her mouth hangs open,

tongue tasting the earth

Head, thrown back to expose

a long column of throat

stained gray with dust and death.

But the eyes are the worst.

They stare into my headlights

and for a moment flash in imitation of life

but it’s just a reflection.

She is trapped,

her torso forever stretching toward the other side of the road

an unreached destination in sight

of blind eyes

and I feel her confusion

as my own,

a life cut so quickly

that she’ll never know what ended her in mid-step,

in darkness,

in glaring lights and squealing tires and nothing.

She is helpless and she is dead

and I should stop

tell myself I would stop, want to stop

and see if I can help when nobody else will.

Unfortunately

I’ve been taught that when it comes to animals,

we can forget that we have a heart.

(c) 2012 Marie KR

This is a topic which frustrates and confuses me to no end; the way that humans treat animals as if they have no consciousness, as if they feel no pain and that their lives have no worth. Someone else sees a deer on the side of the road and thinks “There are too many deer around anyway”, but I agonize over wondering if it’s still alive, if it understood the pain, if it was afraid. I seem to be cursed with an overactive empathy gland, because this is my typical train of thought in most every situation: how well can I understand what that living thing is experiencing? It’s terrible and painful and maybe silly, but I’d rather think like that than just brush off a life because I hold myself superior to it by intelligence or size or species.

But I realize that the title of this post needs an explanation. I’ll assume the incorrect fact that many people are daily checking this blog with bated breath, hoping for an update. Well, you’re all in luck! This post is only the beginning of a series of poems I’ve been working on for a few days and which should be ready for sharing very soon. So, don’t give up hope! There is more rambling to come!

I am currently writing from Indiana; the land where all roads are straight, all fields are flat, and us New Jerseyans are quite conspicuous. We use different words (it’s soda, not pop), we eat different foods (rather difficult being a vegetarian out here), and apparently we speak in accents (I don’t even know). But I do enjoy our annual trip Westward, we get to see the cousins and grandparents and get really confused over the hour’s time difference. However, I do have a problem with the 13-hour car ride we undergo both ways–cramming 5 people, our luggage, and occasionally a dog into one vehicle is no mean feat, and not very comfortable either, but we do it and we survive and that’s how things were in the old days, children, before teleportation and holographic cell phones.

Anyway, in this brief lapse from homework and college applications and life in general, I decided I should provide a little update to y’all and show off my western lingo; whaddaya think, pardner? No, they don’t really talk like that here, but it’s certainly different from back home.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukuh, Happy New Year, and all that jazz. Coming up is a little something I threw together about, well…about being single, I suppose, and realizing that this is temporary and ok and even a good thing sometimes 🙂

Here’s to everyone celebrating this year without a significant other, hope you like: